- A carefree photographic exploration of Afghanistan: a country that was soon to be torn apart by warfare - Haunting pictures of landscapes and people, now irrevocably changed Imagine Afghanistan prior to the terror. In 1963, Blanc set out for India by car, travelling with two friends. One of the many countries they crossed was Afghanistan: an exotic, unfamiliar land which they began to explore. Visiting villages, towns, theatres, bars and markets, Blanc portrayed people and landscapes in equal measure. His black-and-white photographs bear testimony to a world that has long ceased to exist. To someone from the Western world, the pictures seem curiously familiar yet disturbingly different from everything we generally think of in relation to Afghanistan. Blanc shows removed dream places, pristine landscapes, moving portraits and intimate moments. His photography is all the more potent in hindsight, as we know the country and its people he depicts had their hopes for the future cruelly dashed only a short while later.

A young woman prays at her husband's bedside as he lies in a coma with a bullet in his neck. From outside come the sounds of tanks, gunshots, screaming and, most terrifying of all, silence. Inside, her two frightened daughters call to her from the hallway. As she tries to keep her husband alive, the woman rages against men, war, culture, God. Even as her mind appears to unravel, she becomes intensely clear-sighted. Now is her chance - her first ever - to speak without being censored. Her husband's body reminds her of the legend of the patience stone, a stone that hears all confessions until it explodes, and finally, spurred to new heights of daring, she spills out her most explosive secret.